The Creativity of Movement

Categories: Blog Apr 21, 2019

We all share commonalities. Though we all have our differences, we also all have our similarities. We are really all much more alike than we are unlike.

For example, I think there are a few things we all want to experience or enjoy in life: We want to be loved, we want to be valued or respected, we want to feel safe, we want our lives to matter.

I could probably sum all of this up by saying we want to feel good.

All of these things - love, respect, value, safety, peace, purpose - they all assist in helping us to feel good. When we have any one of these, life is just better.

Can you think of a time, maybe it’s now, when you didn’t feel loved? When you didn’t feel like you were respected? When you felt like you didn’t have a purpose or you didn’t know what it was?

Lacking any one of these treasures can be soul-crushing and that doesn’t feel good. In fact, it just plain hurts. 

If you’ve read some of my blogs or seen some of my videos, you probably know Principle #1: It feels good to feel good.

What you might not know is that we were all actually made to feel good. We weren’t created to feel bad or limp through life with a broken soul. We were made to have joy; this is an evident truth on the face of a baby. It’s also an evident truth on the faces of the baby’s family. Life is meant to be joyous. 

But that’s not always the case.

If you look around, there are a lot of people that hurt. You can see it on their faces, you can see it in how they move, you can hear it in what they say, and you can see it in the decisions they make.

How can it be that we were all made to feel good yet so many of us don’t? 

There are numerous contributors to this, to the result of so many feeling and being hurt. And to be clear, hurt is hurt, whether it is physical or mental. It sucks and its effects are quite the same.

Hurt, no matter the cause or the form, removes light from the world. 

Anyway, one reason why so many are hurting is that they aren’t giving away the very things they want to enjoy. This is so simple, so powerful and yet it often completely evades our self-focused radar. But If you want someone to smile at you and be kind to you, then smile at them and be kind to them. You will get what you give. Love to receive love. Forgive to be forgiven. Respect to be respected.

The Golden Rule is indeed golden - a treasure that has and will stand all the tests of time. 

Another reason why so many hurt and don’t feel good is that they aren’t carrying out their design. A hammer is a fine tool for building homes. It has a purpose - to drive nails. Yes, a hammer can make a great paperweight, but that is not its intended purpose. It is created to build, not to secure obsolete papers from moving.

Likewise, we were created to build, to create, to make better, to expand, to explore and so so much more. Yet hidden underneath all our endless creative potential was the creative foundation of movement.

It’s a beautiful design. Your movements create and build your brain and your nervous system. Your ability to think, focus, remember, solve, analyze, connect, understand, learn, love, dream, control your emotions, and so much more are all largely determined, shaped, and influenced by how you moved as a child, how you move as an adult, and if you move. 

Your “you-ness” is largely built upon your movement, whether or not you engage in your design. How you perceive whether or not you are loved, respected, valued, if you are safe, your peace of mind and your purpose are all largely determined by how you move and if you move because movement affects your thoughts and your emotions because movement builds your brain and nervous system. 

So, like the hammer, you can build or you can be a paperweight. One is purpose fulfilling, one is something unintended.

The point is you will NEVER be happy, you will NEVER feel good if you aren’t creating.

You are not meant to be a paperweight. But you were meant to feel good. 

It’s a leap I know.

But what if you could discover your “you-ness,” your purpose, and your joy from moving more? What if you could help your soul heal by strengthening your nervous system or reconnecting your brain through movement? What if you could develop clarity and discover safety through letting go of fear and imagined anxieties simply because you moved more? OR, look at it another way, what if people experience a great deal of hurt, or cannot cope with hurt (causing more hurt) because they haven’t moved much? 

Here is what I know: The body is amazing and it is designed to heal. Healing is healing, whether it is physical or mental. Healing feels good. Our emotional health is attached to our movement. Our mental agility is attached to our movement. Our ability to love is influenced by our movement.

IF we are made to move, and we are, then we are made to feel good and do good things. We really are.

It does feel good to feel good.

Fortunately, we have a lot of say in how we feel. Our design allows us to.

Here are two CREATIVE things that we can do to influence not only how we feel, but how the world around us feels as well  : 

1. Move like we were made to move - breathe well, smile, move your head, spend time on the floor, get outside and play. 
2. Follow (Be) the Golden Rule - whatever it is you want to have, go do it and be it for others. 

Give these a shot this week.  Make a mindful decision to focus on doing these two things each day.  See how this impacts your week and let us know.

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